


Bringing Up Baby

by eternaleponine



Series: Where There Is A Flame [31]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Babies, F/F, Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-15 23:56:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16074068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine
Summary: After visiting Emori and Murphy's new baby, Madi asks her moms if they ever wanted babies, and Lexa tells her a little story.





	Bringing Up Baby

Madi burst into the living with the puppy at her heels and flung herself onto the couch... despite the fact that Clarke and Lexa were already occupying it. A summer growth spurt had turned her gangly and coltish, and she and Betta were a matched pair as they learned the navigate the world on limbs that seemed suddenly too long for their bodies, and with brains that were child-like one moment and desperate to be adult the next... the latter more for Madi than Betta, even though the puppy would grow up faster. 

She wedged herself between them, her back against Lexa's chest and her legs draped over Clarke's lap, and let out a deep sigh. "Charlie is _so_ cute," she said. 

The Razzbaby, now officially Charlie Sand Murphy, had been born Wednesday morning. Children hadn't been allowed at the hospital, and they hadn't wanted to overwhelm Emori and Murphy with visitors right away anyway, so they'd waited until Saturday, when the new parents had had a chance to settle in at home, before going to see the newest addition to the 'ohana. 

If Madi was to be believed, the wait had been an _eternity_.

"They are," Clarke agreed, resting her hand on Madi's grass-stained knee. She assumed there must have been a wipe-out while in the yard running around with Betta to help burn off some of her energy after she'd been stuck in her crate all morning. 

"I can't believe how little they are!" Madi said. "Like, I didn't know people could be that little and still be people!" 

Clarke laughed. "Well consider how big Emori is – or isn't. There's only so much room for a baby to grow in there." 

Lexa wrinkled her nose, and Clarke reached past Madi to stroke her shoulder with one finger. Lexa's mouth quirked in a wry smile. 

"That's true," Madi said. "But _still_."

"Even for a newborn, Charlie's on the small side," Clarke said. They'd been 6 pounds, 9 ounces at birth – a number that Emori joked Murphy was likely to never forget. It was possible that they actually weighed less now, although it would be gained back quickly enough. 

"But so cute," Madi said again. "Mama, did you get good pictures?" She tipped her head back to look at Lexa, which from the angle she was at probably gave her a view straight up her nostrils.

"I did," Lexa said. "Do you want to see?"

"Yes!" Madi said. "Show me!" Lexa raised an eyebrow. "Please," Madi quickly amended. 

Lexa picked up her digital camera from where she'd set it on the end table and flipped on the display on the back. Clarke leaned in so she could see the pictures as she scrolled through: pictures of Charlie alone, including one where they were wearing the hat Gina had made to look like a raspberry, which they had worn when they were brought home from the hospital, and with Emori and Murphy, individually and together. Of course there were plenty of Madi holding the tiny baby in her arms, cooing at them and delicately stroking their cheek, then beaming at the camera when she realized that Lexa was taking pictures. There were a few of Clarke holding baby Charlie, and then Echo when she'd arrived, bringing fresh vegetables from the garden. 

There were also quite a few of the nursery, which featured a giant mural Clarke and Tris had created and painted together of the silhouette of Hogwarts castle and its grounds, green-on-green because Charlie had Slytherin parents. There were also pictures of some of the details, like the Harry Potter print crib sheets Gina had made, and the Quidditch mobile Tris had put together that looked like the players were chasing the Golden Snitch. Clarke hadn't been there when they'd first seen it, but Emori had hugged her for a long time when they arrived and said thank you at least half a dozen times. Even Murphy had hugged her, then announced that she had now exhausted her lifetime allowance for platonic displays of affection so it could never happen again. 

"You'll have to help me pick out the best ones to give to them," Lexa said as she turned the camera off again, "so they can start an album." 

"Okay," Madi said. She squirmed a little, wrapping Lexa's arms around her, taking her left hand and twisting her ring around her finger as if to examine it from all sides, even though it was the same all the way around. Her forehead furrowed slightly, and Clarke waited to find out what she was thinking, because she never kept thoughts to herself for very long. 

"Did you ever want babies?" Madi finally blurted, looking first at Clarke and then at Lexa, whose face had gone abruptly blank as she suppressed whatever reaction she was genuinely having to the question. 

Clarke couldn't help noticing the fact that the question was past tense: 'did you' rather than 'do you'. Like now that they had her, the possibility of wanting a baby was negated, or maybe she realized that the two of them having a baby would be complicated, or maybe it was just how the words came out and there was no significance to the way it was phrased at all. 

"Not specifically," Clarke said, drawing Madi's attention back to her, giving Lexa time to figure out how to answer the question, or possibly keeping her from having to answer at all. "I kind of figured I would have kids at some point, just because that's what most people do, but it wasn't something that I thought about a lot when I was growing up. Like some people imagine their future families all the time, but I didn't. I guess I probably figured that if I was going to have kids, I would do the whole pregnancy, childbirth, baby thing, but again, that was mostly because that's how we're taught to believe things happen."

"Because heteronormativity," Madi said, barely stumbling over the word. 

Lexa chuckled. "That's right, Bug," she said. "Because heteronormativity."

"What about you?" Madi asked. "Did you ever want babies?"

"Nope," Lexa said, so definitively that the p popped. "Babies are definitely not my thing. Too small and easy to break." She smiled at Madi, pressing a kiss to her head. "That's why I take pictures and do laundry instead. I'm very happy that Razzbaby Charlie is part of the family, but I'll hold off on baby-wrangling until they're a little less floppy." 

Madi giggled. "They _are_ pretty floppy," she said. 

"See?" Lexa picked up the end of one of Madi's braids and tickled her chin with it, making her wiggle and squirm until Lexa stopped. "Do you want to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?" she asked. 

Madi nodded. "Always," she said. 

"Okay." Lexa took one of Madi's hands and wrapped her fingers around it. "Once upon a time, way back when Veelu was born, and back when I had only known Clarke for a few months, and we'd only been together for a few weeks, I told her that I didn't ever want kids. Never ever. I was sure of it. And she said that was okay, and she told me pretty much what she told you about how she'd always imagined having kids, but maybe just because that's what was quote-unquote normal. Because heteronormativity. But we agreed that if in the future either of us felt differently, we would talk about it again." 

Clarke watched Madi's face, searching for signs that she might be upset by this story, but she didn't show any. Maybe she'd already figured out that obviously Lexa had changed her mind, because she was here, wasn't she? And she knew that her Mama loved her. 

"Fast forward a few years, and we've graduated college and gotten married and started grad-slash-law school, and Clarke starts telling me about this little girl that she's working with at the hospital, who is so smart and strong and friendly and happy, even though she's got a whole lot of things to not be happy about. She talks about her _a lot_ , but I don't think too much of it. But then it gets to be the holidays, and school is over and Clarke's not working with the little girl anymore, but I know she's still thinking about her, and so I ask her about it, and she says how it just makes her sad knowing that that little girl is in the hospital at Christmas, all alone. So I suggest that we go get her some presents and bring them to her so she's not alone. And we do." 

Madi was smiling now, because she knew this story was about her. They couldn't tell her stories about 'when you were born' or 'when you were a baby', but they could tell her this. The story of how she'd come to be theirs. Clarke took Madi's other hand and squeezed it. 

"I was nervous walking into that hospital room, because I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know how to act around kids, and from my experience trying to teach them Tae Kwon Do, they kind of drove me crazy a lot of the time. But I wanted Clarke to be happy, and I didn't want this little girl to be unhappy, especially not on Christmas, because I knew what that was like, so in we went. And what do you know? This little girl, this Madi that Clarke couldn't stop talking about, was just as smart and strong and friendly as Clarke had said she was. She loved to read and she loved animals and she hated doing her PT exercises but she loved having her hair braided and Monsters Inc. And she didn't drive me crazy at all. I thought she was pretty cool, actually. So we went back to visit her the next day, and the next, and the next."

"And she didn't hate doing PT when she got to hit things," Madi said, grinning. 

"That's right," Lexa said. "She liked hitting things. Because even though she acted happy on the outside, sometimes she wasn't happy on the inside. Sometimes she was mad, or sad, or frustrated. And she had plenty of reasons to feel those things. But learning how to punch gave her a way to get out those feelings that wouldn't make other people upset." Madi nodded. "It made me feel good to be able to help her like that, because a long time ago, when I was around the same age as Madi, I had those same feelings, and punching things and kicking things helped me feel better, too." 

Lexa rested her cheek against Madi's head for a second, taking a breath and letting it out slowly. "After spending a week with the little girl, I couldn't stop thinking about her either. Finally, in the middle of the night on New Year's Eve – really very early in the morning New Year's Day – I woke Clarke up and I said, 'What do we need to do to make her ours? How do we bring her home?' So we looked up what we needed to do to become foster parents, and we talked to her social worker, and she didn't say it was impossible even though we were young and had no idea how to be parents, so we went to all the classes and filled out all the paperwork and did all of the interviews, and finally, _finally_ they said, 'Okay, you can bring your little girl home now.' So we did, and a few months later we made it officially official, and now we have the piece of paper to prove what we had known, deep down, ever since that first day when we were all together: that little girl Madi is our daughter, and we are a family."

Madi curled tighter against Lexa them, drawing in her legs to pull Clarke closer, so Clarke leaned in to wrap them both in a hug, and for a few seconds they stayed like that, holding their daughter safe in their arms while she was still young enough and small enough to want to be held. 

"I never wanted babies," Lexa said, "but it turns out that despite what most books and shows and movies and other people would have you believe, that's not the only way to make a family. And even though I thought I never wanted kids, I always wanted _you_. Right from the start. It just took me a week to realize that if I – if we – lost you, our family wouldn't feel whole. So I'm glad you're here."

"I'm glad I'm here too," Madi said. "You're the family I was waiting for. Even if you're not the family that I was taught to expect. Because heteronormativity." 

Clarke laughed. "But now you'll grow up knowing that family comes in all shapes and sizes, and that when it comes to love and family, you don't have to follow anyone's rules but the ones in your heart."

"And that your little family can be one piece of a puzzle of a much bigger family," Lexa added, "that doesn't have to have anything to do with blood, because it's love that makes a family." 

"An 'ohana," Madi said. 

"An 'ohana," Lexa agreed. 

Madi nodded, and they were all quiet for a little while, just leaning against each other, connected, three people that were one unit, and she and Lexa never really talked about whether Lexa had struggled with changing her mind about wanting kids – or a kid, _this_ kid – or whether it hadn't been a struggle at all, but Clarke was glad that she had. 

All of a sudden Madi stiffened, sitting up wide-eyed and forcing them to let go. "I have an idea," she said, "and I'm gonna need your help."

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, you will find out what Madi's idea is... but not until Christmas... if I can find time to make it happen!


End file.
